Nowadays, more and more bi-way interaction capable equipment is available, or the equipment is capable of being connected to the Internet resource. Such equipment is generally termed as “interactive equipment.” For example, when a user desires to look up and acquire some information on the network, diverse characters and symbols in addition to alphabets and numerals need to be inputted to the interactive equipment, such as an English name “George W. Bush”, a Chinese name “”, and an appropriate search engine website address. However, most of such interactive equipment is not provided with any keyboard for character inputting. Responsive to this, a software-based virtual keyboard in cooperation with an infrared remote control device is one of the most effective solutions.
In such a solution, the remote control device can be used to input a character to the equipment through its key combinations or selection keys. However, such inputting method has a disadvantage of being too slow since the key combination for a specific character has to be kept in an associated memory or looked up in a lookup table when the former scheme is adopted, and a multiple of clicks of the keys are required when the latter scheme is used. In this case, the user is prone to be less interested in the use of the interactive equipment.
In view of the above, there is a need to provide a technology for producing a character on the interactive equipment. After a long intensive series of experiments and research, the inventor finally sets forth a system and method for producing a character on the interactive equipment, which may effectively overcome the demerits existing in the prior art.